


Before He Found This

by bringewritepurge



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-28 19:36:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20783990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bringewritepurge/pseuds/bringewritepurge





	Before He Found This

In his previous life, he’d been through all kinds of break-ups, ranging mostly from ugly to uglier. But there’d been a couple of the more bittersweet variety. They hadn’t necessarily been mutually agreed-upon, but they’d been enacted with care and tenderness, even some regret. Most of these had taken place in the early, heady, days of his romantic life: the girlfriend from sixth form with whom he’d vowed to stay forever, even though they’d be going to different universities on other sides of the country. 3 days into orientation week, before the first term had officially begun, she had gotten together with a rugby player, then called him in a gulping fit of tears and remorse. She’d even sounded deranged at one point, scaring him with the possibility of harming herself. Despite the betrayal and his own heartbreak, he’d offered forgiveness, finally talking her out from under the duvet (the duvet under which the rugby player had also just been). 

He’d always been good at giving counsel, having been trained from an early age. As a child, he’d become a master of the art of listening, learning to absorb someone else’s grievances while putting his own needs aside. That first term at university, his mother had emailed daily to gripe about his father, to say that this was it, it was over, they were done, she had finally had enough. At night, her emails took a turn from sloshy to incoherent. One glass of wine, and she stopped capitalizing the first words of sentences. One bottle of wine, she abandoned punctuation altogether. Two, and all grammar and spelling got fucked. He never called attention to it. Nothing would have shamed his 2 Mphils/1 law degree mother more than the humiliation of having written their for there, or having misspelled bastard. He understood now that by sparing his mother humiliation, he hadn’t been acting in her best interests; that he’d been participating in, if not contributing to, the downward spiral that was her alcoholism. But he’d forgiven himself – he’d been a kid, he hadn’t known another way. His own relationship to the bottle was punishment enough. The night he’d gone to F’s house, he’d planned on telling her some of this stuff, maybe things about his father too, not because he’d wanted her sympathy, but because if she could know how broken he really was, she would want him less. The night hadn’t gone as intended.

There’d been no commitment made (only one large commitment broken, but forget about that for now), so theirs hadn’t been a break-up, not in the strict sense. More of a nipping in the bud, a cutting of losses. Some – okay, not necessarily some, but he, he – might also say it had been an act of compassion. He’d done it for their own good, and it hadn’t been easy. Leaving the wedding, he hadn’t known what he would say. He hadn’t had a plan. He’d actually kind of assumed he’d just go home with her. He was so fucking tired. No sleep and then the damn wedding. Would it be so wrong to have one more night? He already had so much to confess. Adding a wee bit more to the pile wouldn’t make it worse. Obviously, he’d be returning to God, he’d just wait until the next morning to do so.

Maybe they’d even go for a pint. Hang out, sit around, be normal. They’d recount the insanity they’d witnessed between Claire and Martin. She’d tell him where her dad had been when he’d gone missing. He’d tell her about the insane conversation he’d had with the guy with the hair. He’d tell her again how lovely she looked, how pretty and soft. He’d cross over to her side of the table, cram next to her, cup her knee with his palm. They’d walk home holding hands, complaining about how long it took the crossing light to turn, then duck into the little Sainsbury’s for a bottle of something. He’d make sure she had coffee for the morning. If not, they’d buy that too. And real milk, full fat, not the watery half stuff. Oh, and he’d pick up a toothbrush. 

That he was wearing his work clothes, and that the only change he had with him was the wedding cassock, hadn’t factored into this fantasy, but that wasn’t the only reason it was absurd. The mundanity of the pictures he’d drawn for himself! Gossiping, strolling, full fat milk for fuck’s sake.... Had he been envisioning what they’d do in bed, it’d be one thing, but this was some rom-com-style bullshit. He sounded like one of the giggly teenage girls in his confirmation class, obsessed with snapchat and YouTube stars, whose phones he had to confiscate in order for them to pay attention. He was in trouble. And yet….and yet… he still wanted one more night. The bus stop came into view, her pale legs in the darkness. Indignation sped his steps. So much sacrifice, so much deprivation. He didn’t just want this, he deserved it. He winced at the sound of his own thoughts, whiney like an impudent child negotiating with an unwieldy parent. Absurd when here he was a grown man with only himself to reckon; that is, unless you included the almighty lord. If only he hadn’t joined her on that uncomfortable fucking bench. If only he’d just held out his hand and whisked her away. “Off we go!” Maybe then, they’d have gotten their one more night. It had all changed the moment he’d sat down: first, awkward, then heavy. She had asked him outright, he’d given the only answer he could give, and it had ended then and there.

\--

If only they’d had one more night, then maybe this wouldn’t feel so shite. Maybe, they’d have even sobered up, having gotten whatever this was out of their systems, and been able to part in a way that wasn’t so painful or final. The wedding had been what had brought them together. With it behind them, perhaps they’d have been forced to reckon with how little they really knew about each other. Did he even know where she’d gone to university? Had she even asked him how old he was? What his job was before? Actually, she had asked that – at some point during their night together. He’d deflected by pretending not to hear, then kissed her instead. 

Even without a complete picture, he still knew more about her than she, him. Ironic considering his fallible impulse control and loud-mouthed frankness, and her typically defended stance of guarded recalcitrance. Between that first dinner and the wedding, he’d gained a decent amount of intel on her family. He’d been inside the house where she’d grown up, and the flat where she lived: knew where she slept and showered, the titles of books in the pile on the nightstand. The visit to her workplace had proven less revealing, but she wasn’t the only one who could Google. All it had taken was searching the café’s name and the road it was on to discover what had happened. There’d even been pictures, though he’d preferred not to have seen those. Far worse was thinking about what she had seen, the carnage to which she’d borne witness, the damage on her soul it had wrought. He’d needed a drink that night. Then another. When he’d run out of spirits at the rectory, he’d gone to the church, and then she’d shown up. Pissed as he’d been, he’d managed not to reveal what he knew, and she hadn’t brought it up when giving her confession. 

If they’d had one more night, would they have finally talked about it? 

\--

He’d come to remember the first dinner with F’s family as the beginning of his unraveling. He’d been so weak: following her out for a smoke; the way he’d tended to her, play-acting boyfriend by retrieving her purse and coat, paying her bill for god’s sake, then scribbling his details on a crumpled napkin like the crushed-out adolescent from the pre-smartphone days he’d once been. 

It had been impossible not to sympathize with her, and too easy to pretend his attentiveness was of the parochial sort. He had felt oddly protective sitting next to her. His arm kept finding its way to the back of her chair, a move too neutral to be construed as affectionate, while allowing him the pleasure of being her shield. When she’d thrown that punch, he’d risen without thinking, putting himself squarely behind her to block her fall. But protective wasn’t necessarily priestly. On the walk home from the restaurant, he’d found himself unbothered by the pounding pain in his eye socket for thinking of her jumpsuit. So many questions it raised, like: what was happening underneath? Was there an undergarment of some sort? Were there adhesives at play? And finally: Who the fuck wears a jumpsuit like that to a family dinner? 

After F’s confession, he hadn’t been able to sleep, and not just because of the alcohol coursing through his bloodstream, but because of feeling played. He still wondered how much of her confession had been emotional catharsis, and how much had been shrewd, and only possibly subconscious, manipulation. Testament to her cunning was how, in a matter of minutes, she’d managed to expose the beautiful core of her humanity and get him to picture her being sodomized. Even through tears, she’d taunted him. “I know what I want right now,” she’d confessed, knowing full well he would assume she meant him. His breath had hitched in expectation, and then she’d promptly reversed course; delivering a dazzling off-the-cuff soliloquy more spectacular and moving than any sermon he might dream to write; an artful meditation on the desire to sublimate herself in the name of a higher power. Her final gasping plea for him to “tell her what to do,” had made for a bold and brilliant finish, not only because of the 50 shades of BDSM it had conjured in his mind, but because if anyone would understand the desire to abdicate agency, it was a humble servant of the lord. Now she’d managed to make him feeling unexpectedly seen, a sensation so powerful and humbling, so much like love, it had brought him up to his feet, then down to his knees. 

He could only imagine how he’d appeared to her, fleeing the church in anguished disgrace, his black robe billowing behind him, like he was some sort of death eater on a night mission. He hadn’t bothered to wait for her to follow, and might have half-expected to find her still there the next morning, curled up asleep on one of the pews, had he not been too consumed with his own distress to give her well-being a passing thought. Only as he’d been climbing the stairs to her father’s house, steps heavy with dread for what he was about to do, had it occurred to him that over 24 hours had passed, and he hadn’t even once thought to check whether she’d gotten home alright. The relief he’d felt when, not 5 minutes after his arrival, she’d stumbled into the room, looking worse for wear but very much alive, had done little to assuage his mounting guilt. 

What made it all the more incriminating was how he’d behaved the first time she’d made a nighttime visit, showing up at the rectory with a carrier bag of g and t’s. It had been long past midnight after they’d finished the last can, and he’d made a big to do about insisting on calling a car to take her home. F had scoffed, teasing him for being ridiculous; she was more in danger of getting bitten by a fox than of being assaulted in his tame, middleclass, might as well be suburban, parish. He’d even walked her to the gate, and then waited for the car to arrive, hesitating to let her get in until he’d confirmed it was legit. He hadn’t actually been concerned, she was no damsel in distress. This was just more pretend play, wooing without wooing. His years at Seminary hadn’t erased the gender theory he’d absorbed in all those literature courses at university. He knew that, rather than being chivalrous, he was indulging in some hideously antiquated patriarchal posturing. His only excuse was that before becoming a man of the cloth, he’d been a man, and every moment in her company reminded him of that. But what kind of man plies a woman with alcohol, kisses her unbidden, then abandons her alone in a dark church at night? He hadn’t felt like such a cad, since… he’d been one.

\--

At university, he’d had a serious, or at least somewhat serious, girlfriend, an American transfer student. They’d stayed together after graduating--while she got her mPhil in Art History, and he embarked on his big city career – all the while, knowing it wouldn’t work out because she’d eventually move back. Commitment without permanence suited him. He’d liked knowing she’d leave. Except then the inevitable had happened, and he spun out in a way he’d never have predicted and from which he’d never fully recover. He’d been fine at first. It was confusing, how fine he’d been. He’d gloried in the space her absence had afforded him. He could eat what he wanted when he wanted, never needing to check in with her. It had taken a week or so for the grief to hit. At night, he’d sink into the sofa where they’d watched TV, in the flat that still had her name on the lease, drinking the artisanal gin they’d bought at the distillery on that weekend trip to Galway, feeling restless and mournful, and utterly stumped by his despair. It seemed so outsized, out of whack with how he believed he honestly felt. He loved her, of course, and he missed her, but not this much. His friends kept telling him that it would pass. But it only got worse, the divide widening between his pestering, persistent thoughts and what he perceived his true feelings to be, as if his brain were at war with itself, and whichever half housed rational thinking had run low on ammunition. Everything made him think of her: random graffiti that happened to include her initials, American ketchup, the squiggly crack in the teapot she’d dropped that time. She was always at the top of his brain and the tip of his tongue. He met up with friends to distract himself, then killed conversations with gratuitous references to her. He made everyone feel awkward. He’d become weird. He gave up, and stopped going out, devoting long nights to pacing back and forth, drinking alone, mulling over his behavior. Why did he feel so haunted? What was really bothering him? But analysis and insight were no match for whatever madness this was. They only added to the torture.

Eventually, the obsession with his ex would taper off. But he wouldn’t be free. She’d no longer be the focus of his longing, but the longing would still be there. It would rest uneasily inside him like a dybbuk who’d gone down for a nap; a quieted storm that wouldn’t stay quiet long. 

\--

His twenties had passed in a blur: more work, more gin, increased credit limits. At 30, he hadn’t lost his floppy boyish energy, but he’d gained some swagger, a combination that made him all the more appealing to the women he met at parties and pubs; his actions, or lack thereof, all the more appalling. He still looked like a a good guy: still considered himself one, too. He was affable, sensitive, good at listening. Then again, this was the world of high finance at the start of the new millennium; the bar for decent male behavior was low. He couldn’t say when exactly he’d started sleeping around. It had been a slow descent from occasional random hook up to compulsive debauchery. 

It didn't always go to plan. Every now and then, between breaking other people’s hearts, he’d fall hard for someone who didn’t want him back. He could recognize the signs of irrational obsession, the anxious pangs and repetitive thoughts, but that didn’t mean he could ward them off; and it was impossible to predict who would become the object of his yearning, whether it’d be the older French lawyer or the flirty bartender. Often it was someone who, upon introduction, he’d found only marginally attractive, who’d held something of an abject appeal; in his worst, most egomaniacal moments, he might even have fancied he was doing a kindness, going home with her. He had too much energy. This unruly adrenaline that made him feel like he was firing on all cylinders with no one at the wheel. He’d always been garrulous, with a tendency toward unguarded, but never indiscreet or unnecessarily hurtful. Now he was downright inappropriate, speaking out of hand, revealing too much, blurting out insults he hadn’t intended, forever apologizing that he’d been “just joking,” the childhood dictum of think before you speak, long ago shot to hell. He’d developed a disturbing habit of swearing at inappropriate times: in business meetings, when queuing for the till at WH Smith.

Every time he’d thought he’d gotten to the lowest point, he found a way to go lower. At work, he had stopped working. Hours of repetitive pointless online searches and social media scouring to find out more about her, whoever at the moment she was, as if he’d find one key morsel of information that would bring him closer; all the while reminding himself that the woman in question was someone he barely knew and, quite possibly, wouldn’t even like. He’d chastise himself for wasting his time, for being out of control, pathetic and weak, which only sunk himself deeper. He’d tell himself he needed to get help, then never would. Any attempt to rein himself in failed. By winter of his 35th year, it had gotten to the point when he almost wished for something catastrophic to happen: to suffer a mental break that would leave him so dysfunctional, he’d get sectioned; to drink himself into liver failure – or at least, into rehab; to take one step too far with a woman and be slapped with a restraining order. Salvation came that Christmas; his mother’s begrudging companion to evening Mass, he found a way to restrain himself

\--

He’d never fooled himself into thinking Seminary had fixed him, but he’d hoped he’d done enough spiritual work there, and in the years that followed his ordination, to have at least gotten a better grip on himself. His behavior with F suggested otherwise. He’d hoped pulling out of the wedding would bring him a measure of peace, but it only made him feel more unstable. He’d been halfway down the front steps when F’s godmother let loose those furious shrieks. They stopped him in his tracks. It wasn't only because they'd been intended for him. That, he could handle. It was how familiar they sounded. Like his mother. He was transported back to that fateful Christmas years ago. After Mass and before lunch, his parents had gotten into a tumultuous row, the likes of which he hadn’t witnessed since childhood. It had driven him out the door, and into the cold without a coat, which is how, at the time, he’d accounted for his return to the church. Of course, it had been more than that; a divine intervention, you could even call it. God hadn’t offered him a place to warm his hands as much as deliver him to his calling. 

Footsteps came from the other side of the door. The latch clicked, and he bolted, bounding so quickly he missed a step and nearly flung himself face-first onto the pavement. That he managed to regain his balance, make it out the gate and halfway down the road before F and her sister emerged, seemed miraculous. An undeserved act of mercy; God’s shifty way of reminding him just who had his back – and who would continue having his back as long as he behaved. He took the hint. He hightailed it to the bus stop, where she sat slumped, and summoned the strength to banish her.

He couldn’t say what had come over him that afternoon that enabled him to undo all the morning’s actions. Okay, in retrospect, he knew what had come over him – that was obvious – but he couldn’t say what at the time had allowed him to act on it. All he knew was that he’d rung F’s father to rescind the cancellation, and when he hung up, it felt like he’d fallen into a trance, guided by a mystical force that allowed him to delude himself so thoroughly, he truly believed his flimsy reason for going over to F’s house. He believed it when he told Pam not to expect him for dinner; when he popped out to the gym for no reason other than it gave him the excuse to shower and primp without having to admit to himself why he was doing so; and then when he was changing back into his work clothes, the suit of armor he had no intention of using, because, of course, this was church business to which he would be attending.

\--

He and F had a habit of catching each other unaware, of scaring the crap out of each other when unexpectedly encountering each other. It was such an obvious, ham-handed metaphor for the disruption they were causing in each other’s lives, he’d assumed it was God’s work, a scold less dramatic than a crashing painting or a night visit from a rabid fox, but a scold nonetheless. Hours into their night together, F had startled him awake. God apparently had been feeling peevish.

“Hey.”

He had only just drifted off, and for the briefest moment had forgotten where he was. “Fuck! Oh. What?”

“You were going to tell me something before. About when you were a kid….”

“Huh?” 

“You know, before, just after you got here, in the front room. What were you going to say?”

“Do you mean before your friend rang the bell and interrupted?” 

“Yeah, except we don’t have to talk about that part.” 

“Uh huh.” 

“Please?”

She had a magnificent nose, long and regal with a bump that only made her more beautiful. He ran his finger from the bridge down to the tip, and said: “Whatever I was going to say, I don’t remember. I doubt it was anything interesting.” 

She seemed to accept this, silently gazing at him, tilting her head without averting her eyes. It was intense. “What?” he said.

“I’m trying to picture what you looked like as a child. You were beautiful, I bet.”

\--

If he hadn’t delivered that mad homily at the wedding, would they have had their one more night? 

He hadn’t intended for it to be so scorching. It wasn’t what he’d written that morning, still in the afterglow, the feel of F’s skin fresh on his fingertips. That had been sweet and poetic, maybe almost too treacly. Something happened to him when he was standing before that crowd. He’d never know what exactly spurred it: Claire and Martin’s venal display, F’s father’s very obvious misgivings, the pain of reaching for the bible, and seeing red lipstick smeared across his knuckles. Maybe all of it. 

He’d opened his mouth, thinking he’d say what he’d prepared, then shocked himself with jagged, angry words in direct opposition to the tenderness he knew he felt. He'd looked into the crowd and seen F, head turned toward her sister and away from him. 

It would only be in hindsight that he’d see his homily for what it had been: a proclamation of love, the real kind in all of its ugly shades and surprising dimensions, his big reveal, one final attempt to protect her, a rallying cry: Look! See! I’m a mess! User Beware.

A last-ditch plea of “Please don’t love me.”


End file.
